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Stop HS2 day of Action – What you can do today

Dear Stop HS2 Supporter,

Today, Monday 16th July, Stop HS2 are holding a national day of action.

This is likely to coincide with Transport Secretary Justine Greening announcing a package of rail investments, including the electrification of the Midland Mainline, which will further reduce the supposed ‘need’ for HS2 and tear more strips of the business case. The investments announced tomorrow are in many ways the ‘last chance saloon’ for alternative rail investments before the spending on HS2 is due to kick in and hog the DfT infrastructure budget for the best part of two decades.

We very much hope you can join us for the demo outside parliament at Old Palace Yard, Westminster, SW1P 3JY, from 12-2 on Monday (gather from 11.30A.M).

If you haven’t done so already, whether you are coming or not, please also ask your MP if they can join us for a while, preferably 1pm, on the day.

If you can’t join us, could you email or phone (ideally between 12-2) contacting MPs, Lords, and Councilors to remind them that we have not gone away and we are not going to go away, and to demonstrate that you don’t have to travel to be effective. The House of Commons switchboard is 0207 219 3000.

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I wish to add my voice to today’s Day of Action protest against HS2. There is even less reason for HS2 now with Midland Mainline agreed. How much we will have to pay for HS2 if the unexpected HS1 debt to the tax payer of 4.8 billion is anything to go by? The environmental issue is devastation to the countryside. I am very clear HS2 has no business case and is a environmental disaster.

Fifteen years or so, to the day(?) Parliament refused to support the Central Railways scheme to rejuvenate much of the Great Central route.

Designed to be a fast line for freight, nevertheless I remain convinced that, had the then Government given its support, then passenger services could have been included so as to restore rail links north and south to places such as Aylesbury and Brackley, direct links which were severed in 1966, since when so many of these places have doubled and trebled in size.

Had the G.C. route been restored, [and linked into the West Coast line near Rugby, beyond the most congested section on the approach to London)and rebuilt to the modern standard now so common in Germany and even rural Austria, then we should never have had to face the prospect of High Speed 2 .

But with British short termism -and, from the Marples era onwards, an over reliance on roads to solve all of our transport needs- the opportunity was lost.(and the costs of any adequate alternative continued and continue to escalate)

Today’s announcement of investment of the existing network- including electrication, as has been urged by so many on this site and elsewhere, is greatly to be welcomed, but we are still catching up from decades of under investment, neglect and in too many cases, deliberate running down of services and infrastructure.